111. M83 - Saturdays = Youth (2008)

It's so satisfying when a group with an interesting sound but less-than-interesting ways of implementing it gets their act together and finds the perfect style and subject matter for their music. Jose Gonzalez' idea to meld his super-emotional electronic noise washes with John Hughes movie soundtrack-esque melodies and song structures was one of the most genius conceptual moves of the entire decade; a specific time in music is evoked so perfectly that it practically induces flashbacks. And, most importantly, this music evokes the 80s without copying it: the songs might be a little retrograde, sure, derivative of stuff by Single Minds and Richard Marx and (most obviously) Peter Schilling, but M83's style itself is wholly futuristic. The album is perfectly tuned and sequenced: "Kim and Jessie" is basically opening credits music, gigantic chords and longing, longing, longing. The word "emo" gets thrown around a lot, and if you could somehow remove all its negative associations this kind of music is what would be left: huge, pastel-colored blasts of synth coupled with lyrics that make absolutely no logical sense but make perfect emotional sense--just like the music. Most of these songs build up to apocalyptic climaxes of electronic noise and Morgan Kibby's alien vocals, and it works. You get chills down your spine. The final track, being little more than 12 minutes of the exact same keyboard line over and over, is a little disappointing, but if you treat it like closing credits music (i.e. feel free to ignore it, walk out) it works. Just play "You, Appearing" again, and if the hair on your neck doesn't go up, I don't know what's wrong with you. A huge, huge, huge improvement on  this band's previous two records.

MY RATING: 9.2

M83 -  "Skin of the Night"

160. Deerhunter - Cryptograms (2007)

Disclosure: Deerhunter are, IMO, the best new American band to come along in the last five years, so take into consideration that this review is written by someone who loves the band, loves their sound, and would likely love anything they do. So. Deerhunter's second album is a head-on collision between ambient feedback tones and poppy shoegaze music, and what makes it work as well as it does is the band's unerring sense of how to sequence a record. Nobody today puts albums together as well as Deerhunter does; each song expertly gains power by its placement in the whole, and I do not envy the task of whoever, ten years from now, is given the job of extracting tracks from their albums to put together a compilation. I suppose one reference point is Sonic Youth, but I feel like Deerhunter are even better at combining their pop influences and their avantgarde influences; the band, through amazing production and the aforementioned sequencing, makes a straight-up pop track like "Spring Hall Convert" fit in perfectly with a weird piece of avantgarde disco like "Octet". The band would get even more poppy and outsized than this later, with the compressed masterpiece Microcastle and the gorgeous pop record Halcyon Digest, but this is easily the equal of those.

MY RATING: 9.2

Deerhunter - "Spring Hall Convert"

188. M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (2003)

An interesting situation: a creative, original sound, but no good songs or arrangements to go with it. M83's second album follows the shoegaze pattern of My Bloody Valentine and Ride, except with the guitars entirely replaced by electronics programmed to sound like guitars--so what we've got here is faux-guitar noise with obscure little electronic plinks and keyboard tones in the background designed to give the music space. The thing is loud, overpowering, and boring. There is no talent shown here in arrangements at all--every track follows the same formula: begin with a pretty enough keyboard melody and layer on noise until it becomes ear-shatteringly loud. And that's it. There is not a moment that deviates from this. One track of this is fine enough to listen to, but everything becomes nearly unlistenable when repeated twelve times. What might have made this work is if the tracks were longer and the progression-of-loudness more intricate (this is how most post-rock groups like Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor! work) but nope, most of the songs are between three and four minutes. M83 would would produce one more bad album (Before the Dawn Heals Us) before perfecting their sound, but this album is really of no interest except to completists. Download one track; that's all you need.

MY RATING: 2.7

M83 - "Noise"